So far, to your credit, dear Future King of England Charles, you have stopped short of saying, “I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that valet, Mr. Fawcett. I never told anybody to lie. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the British people.”

I commend you on your restraint. I also want to say: Look, it’s okay. We understand over here on this side of the pond. (And Ken Starr understands, too.) We have an implicit grasp of the experiments of youth, which sometimes cross over into adulthood.

The girls among us remember telling our after-school playmates, “Wait a second, that’s not my bellybutton.” The boys among us remember saying, “That’s all right, that’s not my finger.” And the boys who went to all-male boarding schools (just like you, Charles) remember saying both.

When we heard ages ago that your devoted valet Michael Fawcett squeezed toothpaste onto your toothbrush, we grasped immediately that it didn’t necessarily literally involve his squeezing toothpaste onto your toothbrush.

Pish-posh, I say, to the literalists!

Then again, as Ken Starr knows, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

And sometimes a feminine-hygiene product is just a feminine-hygiene product—for instance, when you told Camilla Parker Bowles in a phone call (intercepted by that nasty British newspaper) that you wanted to be reincarnated as her tampon. This, of course, is standard locker-room talk among straight men. All purely heterosexual men express their muff-love with such headlong, tone-deaf, desperate-to-be-believed devotion.

I’m so pleased, too, that Camilla has stood by your side, declaring not only that you are “a man of utter integrity and honesty” but that “my prince would never do that.” (Hillary Clinton understands.)

Huh? Do that? Get your toothpaste tube squeezed? Your tampon inserted? What? Fortunately, we’ll never know, because the British press is legally required to maintain a stiff upper lip.

At any rate, your Royal Oral Hygiene Regimen is between you and your manservant. So be it.

Just don’t forget to floss.

And yes, I have no idea what I mean by that.

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer Features”
• Articles by Simon Dumenco
• From the Nov 23, 2003 issue of New York